Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix Radio Edit) – Omi: This song. I have a love-hate relationship with it. The kids love it and it has a nice calypso-y feel to it that makes it fun for tap, so I had to include it. Be warned – this will be the song that plays over and over in your head when you go home for the night.

Rude (Acoustic) – MAGIC!: This is from last summer, but I have been loving using the acoustic version for tap. Such a fun little groove.

You know how you start on YouTube looking up a ballet step and then you end up down a weird alley of YouTube and don’t know how you got there? Or is that just me? Anyway, this time I ended up at drone videos of Chernobyl (what?), but at least I got this haunting song out of it. Happy Monday!

Loving this cover by Madilyn Bailey of the Maroon 5 song, Maps. I’ve been using it with my advanced tappers for a little combination. My tappers call this style “lyrical tap” – when you tap to a song that could traditionally be for contemporary or lyrical. I like that this song has a lot of pauses in it which are fun to fill with tap!

I regularly troll YouTube looking for covers of pop music, however when you search “cover + song title”, you inevitably end up with 100 acoustic covers done by anyone with a piano, guitar and a voice. Generally nothing too exciting, usually a slower version of the pop song.

Anyway, when I stumbled onto Postmodern Jukebox, I knew I had struck gold. Pop songs with a vintage twist, they are such a unique cover band. Do you like Doo Wop? Ragtime? Swing? Ever wonder what pop songs would sound like if they were sung in speak-easies? Yeah, me neither, but now I can’t stop listening.

Another great instrumental track (see “Let It Go / Winter” mash-up from last month if you want another instrumental), here is “Torn” by Nathan Lanier. It’s very “epic soundtrack-y” – I’m using it this year for a modern class who requested a dance where half could be good and half could be evil. It seems to be suiting them well.

I believe it was used on SYTYCD a few seasons back, but haven’t seen it hit the competition circuit too hard yet, so I figured I’d share!The Dance Buzz is an iTunes affiliate.